‘I was an optometrist. Now I’m an MP. I had to sink or swim’
One hundred days into the job, parliament’s new independent members are getting to grips with the dress code and their fellow MPs. But can they make a difference?
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Any new starter at a huge, centuries-old institution might take the odd wrong turn while looking for the kitchen, and so it is for Shockat Adam, who is still getting his bearings in the ornate corridors and dusty rooms of the Palace of Westminster. As one of Britain’s new independent MPs, though, Adam doesn’t have a boss or HR manager to show him the ropes — nor a party leader or chief whip to make sure he turns up to vote.
“I still don’t know all the places to eat and drink, and all the meeting rooms and offices,” says Adam, who was elected MP for Leicester South in July. “But I have found the route of least resistance to the chamber. It may not be the shortest distance but I can get there without ending up in a broom cupboard.”
Adam, alongside Ayoub Khan, Iqbal Mohamed and Adnan Hussain, is among the biggest intake of independent MPs to parliament in British history. Last month, they formed the Independent Alliance with former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who was barred from standing for his old party. Saturday (12 October) marks 100 days since their election.
“I was an optometrist a couple of months ago,” says Adam, who turned over a 33,000-vote majority to unseat shadow minister Jonathan Ashworth. “Now I’m a member of parliament. You hit the ground running. You have no choice. You sink or swim, right?”
Their success punctured an otherwise seismic victory for Keir Starmer, in which the Conservative vote collapsed and Labour more than doubled its parliamentary headcount. But frustration over Starmer’s position on Gaza, particularly in areas with high Muslim populations, resulted in the independents taking five seats Labour had been forecast to win — Leicester South, Islington North, Birmingham Perry Barr, Blackburn, and Dewsbury and Batley.
“It’s almost like this is a club which only those affiliated to strong political parties have a right to be at,” says Khan, who beat Birmingham Perry Barr’s incumbent Khalid Mahmood by a few hundred votes. “I’ve spoken to many parliamentarians who are very friendly, but you get this feeling in your gut about whether you ought to be there in the first place.”
This is no doubt compounded by the rather buttoned-up nature of parliament itself. Mohamed, the new MP for Dewsbury and Batley, is still getting used to the sartorial rules, having to wear a jacket and tie in the chamber at all times. Khan, a barrister by trade, is less fazed by the dress code but notes the limited halal options in the canteens and says the prayer facility needs upgrading as there’s no area for washing.
While their first 100 days have included a significant amount of time away from parliament due to party conferences and a summer break, there’s been no shortage of political tension. One of the earliest, and most controversial, votes in which the new MPs took part was on an unsuccessful motion to scrap the two-child benefit cap.
The consequences of that vote underlined the realities of party politics. Unlike the independent MPs, Labour members were ordered to vote against the motion and, when seven backed it anyway, all were suspended from the parliamentary party. After the vote, the five independent MPs published an open letter thanking the Labour members for “standing up” for their principles, calling their treatment “beyond disgraceful”.
“They voted with their conscience,” says Mohamed. “For these people to be suspended with the charge of disloyalty — that is not true democracy.”
As well as open letters, the new independent MPs can make their voices heard in other ways — including literally, by speaking in the Commons, as they have done on matters ranging from private schools to council housing to recognition of a Palestinian state. Between them, they have also put forward 10 early day motions, which are largely symbolic submissions to parliament that signal MPs’ support for particular causes.
“There are so many committees, so many APPGs [all-party parliamentary groups], so many meetings, so many briefings and so many questions I can ask and things I can sign if I agree with, like we have already done with the two-child care cap letter,” says Adam.
But he admits making waves is not easy. Adam’s most successful early day motion called for the government to recognise the state of Palestine — but even this attracted only 19 signatures from other MPs. Other motions submitted by Adam and Khan, covering everything from the funding of local coroners to the gender pay gap at Asda, won even fewer backers.
“I don’t have this support from an official party base with hundreds of years of experience and backing and finances,” says Adam. “But what I do have is the flexibility. I cannot be hamstrung by some of the restrictions that can be placed upon you within a party system.”
The MPs formed the Independent Alliance to push for better representation in parliament. Committee memberships and speaking time in debates are loosely assigned along party lines, meaning independents can be shut out. Collectively, though, they have as many seats as Reform UK, and one more than the Greens.
But it is up to the Commons speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, whether to recognise the group in the same way as a formal party — and so far, this has not happened. Hoyle has sent only an acknowledgement that the MPs’ request has been received.
Either way, Palestine, the issue that helped propel the MPs to office, is likely to remain central to their agenda. “Over 40,000 innocent civilians have been killed,” says Mohamed. “I can’t sleep soundly until the situation is resolved. The Palestinians are not asking for special treatment. Their homes are taken. Their families are murdered. It must take a level of depravity that I can’t even imagine to come up with these forms of torture and aggression.”
All, though, insist they are not single-issue politicians. Khan points out that he was the only one of Birmingham’s 10 MPs to support the removal of the two-child benefit cap. This is, perhaps, a dig at another Birmingham MP, Labour’s Tahir Ali, who criticised Khan and his colleagues in the chamber moments before the vote, over language used in their election campaigns. Adam, meanwhile, brings up concerns over housing in his constituency during our interview, as well as the lack of breakfast clubs, youth clubs and playgrounds.
“My strategy is pretty much the same as, I suspect, the other independents,” says Khan. “We have no party whip. We have issues that impact our constituents, and we vote and will support any amendment, any policy that benefits our constituents.”
He hopes the independents’ election is the beginning of a bigger change in national politics. “Politicians, when they have healthy majorities, become complacent,” he cautions. “This election has demonstrated that people are disillusioned with party politics and if they see hypocrisy, they are not frightened to support independence.”
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